This year, we have 3 open seats on the OSHWA board. Board members will hold a 2-year position. Once board members have been chosen by the community, the board will appoint a President, VP, and Secretary. As every nominee answered “Yes” to having 5 hours a month to give to the board, we did not include that question in each nominee’s data. Board responsibilities include fundraising, advising on goals and direction, and carrying out compliance of the organization’s purposes and bylaws. The vote will be open on Oct. 14th through Oct 21st. Members will be emailed a link to vote. Here are the nominees in alphabetical order:

Akiba

Why do you want to be on the board?

I’ve been involved and worked with many nonprofits and NGOs doing projects like monitoring illegal waste dumping, monitoring water quality in the Himalayas, radiation monitoring in Japan, etc. All of those projects have used open source hardware in some form because the designs could be rapidly put together, deployed, and assessed. Crises are becoming the norm and I believe open source hardware will play a crucial role to prevent, mitigate, or assist aid workers and victims during those times. I’d like to give back to the open source hardware community for all the benefits I’ve received as well as help guide OSHW and OSHWA towards more cooperation with nonprofit humanitarian and aid agencies.

What qualifies you to be a board member?

I’ve been designing open source hardware for the past ten years and have run an open source hardware company for the same amount of time. I think it’s important for OSHWA board members to understand the value of OSHW and how that translates into commercial value for their companies. I’ve put together or have been involved putting together four hackerspaces (Tokyo Hackerspace, Mothership Hackermoms, Knowledge Garden Dharamsala, and HackerFarm) and understand the importance of building, maintaining, and growing community. I’ve also worked with, consulted, and put together open hardware projects for groups like UNESCO, World Bank, and IAEA and believe that it’s important to reach out and educate NGOs doing important work to the benefits of open source hardware.

Will Caruana

Why do you want to be on the board?

I want to be part of something bigger then my self. I feel that I will add an outside perspective. I don’t work in any industry that produces goods but I live in that maker space of the communitte.

What qualifies you to be a board member?

I served as president of a non profit for 5 years it’s the Friends of Wilbraham Public Access. I was the chairmen if the Board Band Committee which was able to set up a municipal corporation that sell fiber optic services to ISP’s. I also love make things currently I like making high voltage projects like my demo fusion reactor which currently produces a ball of plasma in a vacuum. I am also running the fun with high voltage workshop at the Hackaday Superconference because I like helping people learn and work with high voltage.

Arielle Hein

Why do you want to be on the board?

I work and engage with a vastly diverse range of different communities, but one of the primary overlaps between these groups is that they all rely heavily on open source tools, hardware in particular. I am extremely passionate about building bridges between the arts and engineering, and making this cross-disciplinary work more accessible to a broad range of makers – to artists and women especially. I love to create, hack, and teach all things open source – but as much as I’m excited about exploring emerging technologies, the thing that drives me most is the way that sharing knowledge is an opportunity to build connections between people. I am excited about the prospect of more direct engagement within the Open Source Hardware community, and eager to assist in continuing to extend the mission of this organization.

What qualifies you to be a board member?

Since my time as a graduate student at ITP NYU, I have worked extensively with Open Source Hardware and have engaged with the community consistently since then. In my current role as an Instructor at the University of Colorado, I teach interaction design and physical computing courses that rely heavily on open source tools. Beyond skill acquisition, my philosophy as an educator focuses on the importance of knowledge sharing, documentation, and collaboration – notions that I will bring to my contributions on the board of OSHWA. I also have extensive community organizing experience through my ongoing work as the Coordinator of ITP Camp. I am a strong communicator (and listener!) and very organized and responsive in all correspondence. I am extremely excited about the opportunity to serve not he OSHWA board and am hopeful to deepen my contributions within this community. I am glad to answer any questions via email from anyone in the community regarding my qualifications or interest in this role!

David Li

Why do you want to be on the board?

I am currently the executive director of Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab which is a government supported platform to promote and facilitate the collaboration between the Shenzhen open hardware ecosystem and the global makers and open source hardware groups. Prior to SZOIL, I also started the research hub Hacked Matter with two collaborators to study global maker movement and open hardware ecosystem in Shenzhen and publish our findings. Shenzhen open hardware ecosystem is currently a 100 billion industry and the insight into how this ecosystem was developed and structured could contribute the future growth of the global open source hardware development.

What qualifies you to be a board member?

I have been an open source and free software contributor since 1990 on various of projects. Ardublock I developed in 2012 is one of the most popular graphical development environments for Arduino. I have been doing research in the area of open hardware ecosystem in China since 2011. In my previous role as the director of ObjectWeb an European based open source software consortium in 2003-2006, I contributed to the joint effort between ObjectWeb and major Chinese open source software projects. I can bring new insights to the board and help bridge the global open hardware and the open ecosystem in China.

Narcisse Mbunzama

Why do you want to be on the board?

I want to bring my experience and knowledge on open hardware and related issues with a special view on technical and organizations development. As a citizen of the democratic republic of Congo, I wish to represent the global south in the board, to bring valuable contribution and inputs finally to help achieve the open hardware association mission.

What qualifies you to be a board member?

I hold a master degree in computer science and technology innovation and I am a fellow of the international telecommunication union and member of several technology innovation organizations around the world. I’m a serial award winning tech innovator and I conduct researches on standards for open hardware, design of system and related issues. With my background and experience, I personally believe that I am a qualified candidate to join the board and i will bring valuable inputs and contribution in the board.

Joel Murphy

Why do you want to be on the board?

I’ve been a board member of OSHWA since 2015, and now that my two year stint has ended I am once again throwing my hat in the ring to continue serving this great organization. In the last two years, I am proud to have helped steer the creation of the OSHWA Certification. We also made our first formal staff hires, for which I worked on the compensation committee. It has been amazing to watch our community grow. I hope to continue as a board member to ensure that our certification is strong and widely used. It has been a great pleasure to work with the other dedicated board members and it would be an honor to receive your vote to continue giving back to our community at this level.

What qualifies you to be a board member?

I have been a user, maker, and teacher of open-source hardware since 2006. I have co-founded two open-source hardware start-ups, and I’m working on my fourth. I have been to every OSH Summit since 2010 and I have personal and professional relationships with many community members. I taught Physical Computing at Parsons in NYC from 2006 to 2014. During that time I watched the open-source hardware movement explode around me. Working with students in 2011, I saw an opportunity, and with a friend started World Famous Electronics, maker of the Pulse Sensor, an optical heart rate monitor for makers and researchers. That foray into bio-sensing lead me to co-found OpenBCI, makers of low cost, open-source EEG amplifiers for neuroscience research and education. In addition to these endeavors, I’m am also working with a team to create and commercialize open-source hearing aids and hearing aid development tools. 5 of my projects are now OSHWA certified. I’m committed to increasing the awareness of OSHWA, growing our organization and continuing to support our mission.

Chris Osterwood

Why do you want to be on the board?

I am a longtime user of Open Source Hardware and have benefited from it greatly. I want to return that favor and help others benefit from OSHW. I’m a mechanical engineer by training and I chose that educational path because I was fascinated and captivated by the mechanical world. I gained tremendous design insight and experience by taking apart my toys as a child — in fact my favorite store sold broken junk by the pound. Being able to see how my toys worked gave me interest in designing new products. Since college, I’ve learned electrical design through study of open source hardware schematics, bills of materials, and design journals. I now see that I’m repeating my childhood but in digital circuit design — learning new skills and design strategies by interrogating what others have made. And without OSHW, without published schematics, this kind of interrogation and subsequent learning is much more difficult. What I’ve learned has allowed me to start my own company, Capable Robot Components, which will be releasing a line of OSHW products aimed at changing the make vs buy decisions that makers of unmanned ground robots currently face. I want to be on the OSHWA board to further its mission and to help others benefit from OSHW as I have.

What qualifies you to be a board member?

I’m not sure quite how to answer this question. But, I understand and am interested in organization building — for example I’m on the steering committee of the Pittsburgh Robotics Network, which is becoming a 501c6 organization. I am embracing OSHW with the products I’m designing at my company. I have functional knowledge in hardware design, embedded software, web software, marketing, and law. I enjoy teaching and speaking — I’ve given talks on law & robots (Practicing Law Institute) and how we tested 3D sensors at my previous company (Embedded Vision Summit and ROSCON). I listen. I try to make well reasoned decisions.

Jeff Paranich

Why do you want to be on the board?

My low-level coding interests for the past 20 years have led me to hardware design, and the colossal reward of holding a tangible, physical item, in your hands that can be shared with others to extend upon and use in their designs. While programming low-level in itself is still fulfilling, the thought that everyday consumers can build their own commercial grade products with all the distributor resources available today is truly phenomenal. Curiously, the knowledge that such a movement exist is not known by the general population. One simply envisions big factories, assembly lines, and blue-chip organizations being the sole innovator and originator; when in reality there are compelling and pioneering designs being done by small organizations and private individuals in their own homes. I believe this is a tragic mindset; the homebrew and maker community was strong in the eighties, there was a general knowledge it existed by all and anticipation of an upcoming wave to pave the future to new technology. I can attest that today open hardware has, and will continue to gain, a lot of momentum – and is strongest it has been in two decades – but may continue to be eclipsed by large organizations that keep much of their business proprietary. Canada, my home country, has a very strong post-secondary system; world-class Computer Science and Engineering schools, however outside of BioWare and BlackBerry there has not been much traction in STEM corporations, small business’, nor makers in the nation, I believe due in part to organizations such as OSHWA not having a strong enough presence to inform and encourage innovation and open source/hardware from early on and to general masses. Thus, I desire to be on the board to expand awareness of the Open Source Hardware Association and inform and educate those who are not aware of what it represents. I pledge to attend fairs or events, fundraise well beyond the expected $300 as it is not enough, and provide meaningful input on the Board of Director meetings. I also believe the best protection for OSHWA’s future is committing resources to youth at early ages, expanding their mind into hardware before they move onto post-secondary or private studies – even presenting hardware as a valid field of self-study that can merit much personal success with all the open source resources available today. OSHWA is the strongest association and best bet right now to incite change, grow the movement further, and ensure the hardware community story remains a rich and colorful one. It would be an absolute honor to be part of the team and ensure its continued success.

What qualifies you to be a board member?

I hold dual degrees from the University of Alberta- Bachelor of Science in Computer Science & Bachelor of Science in Actuarial Mathematics, with a minor in Business. I have been a projects controls manager for over two billion dollars in heavy oil projects; managing revenue, cost, margins, scheduling and progress completion. When I am not managing projects, I am designing hardware in my workshop. My most common projects typically involve power supplies, FPGA boards, video processing ADC/DAC boards, and audio amplifiers. Furthermore, I have coded a multitude of company software programs – software as simple as employee in/out of office interfaces, to estimating software for piping fabrication, to invoicing software which neared that of a full ERP system. I have a thorough knowledge of C++, C and the Unix tool set (Awk, Sed, etc), and believe in the Unix philosophy of building simple, short, clear, modular, and extensible code that can be easily maintained and repurposed by developer’s other than its creators. I can operate under tight deadlines and sometimes unrealistic deliverables, accepting the challenge and looking forward to the feeling of reward once finished. Lastly, I am co-founder of a successful videography company in Alberta (J&C Media Corporation), managing employees and finances and scheduling – also doing occasional filming myself in the field for corporate and private events. All said my past is very multi-faceted, I have a multitude of exposure to many elements at various business levels and have been successful to date with a clear, structured framework to how I approach things and would apply all my techniques to ensure the continued success of the Open Source Hardware Association.

Nick Poole

Why do you want to be on the board?

I’ve always been a proponent of OSHW and other Free and Open initiatives and I believe I finally have the free time and bandwidth to get involved with steering the ship. I’m also interested in talking to other board members and learning from their perspectives.

What qualifies you to be a board member?

I’ve worked for SparkFun Electronics for almost 7 years where I’ve had the opportunity to see open hardware from a number of perspectives: as a marketing professional, a community discussion leader, and a designer and maintainer of open hardware projects. I believe that my work experience combined with my unique personal perspective and affinity for facilitating and mediating discussions could make me a valuable member of the board.

OSHWA is looking for 3 new faces to join the board of directors for the Open Source Hardware Association. The nominee form is for self-nominations only. Please fill out the nominee form (deactivated October 14) to become a nominee or forward the link to someone you want to nominate. Do not fill out the form for someone else. The purpose of this form is to tell voting members why you want to serve on the OSHWA board. We will be publish the nominees and their answers on Oct. 14th. Board members hold a 2-year position. Once board members have been chosen by the community, the board will appoint a President, VP, and Secretary. Board responsibilities include fundraising, advising on goals and direction, and carry out compliance with the organizations purposes and bylaws. See the board member agreement to get a sense of the responsibilities. Board members are expected to adhere to the board attendance policy and come prepared having read the board packet. Board members are expected to spend 5-10 hours of time per month on OSHWA. Nominees can meet current board members who are present at the Summit on Oct. 5th to ask questions or submit questions to info@oshwa.org. Nominations will be open until Oct. 12th.

Member voting will take place Oct. 14-21. Want to vote in the election? Become a member! Please note that only individuals can vote, corporate members cannot.

We are only a few months out from this years OHSummit! This year we will be hosting the annual gathering in the Rocky Mountain region in beautiful Denver, Colorado. Denver is home to several startups and projects built around the open source ethos with a thriving community to support the movement. If you are interested in finding out more about some of the local open source culture, be sure to check out the new events page here!

We are excited to announce that ART Hotel, adjacent to this year’s venue, is working with us to provide discounted rates for their rooms! Find out more information here.

Gibb’s talk was entitled ‘The Physical Future of Open Source’. The talk was a primer on Open Source Hardware and the future possibilities of communities working together. In her talk, she said: “The more we band together, the more the world becomes open source. If we dream of an Open source world, the world includes physical products. We need to be thinking more holistically. ”

Alicia Gibb talks open source hardware

“For this open source future to happen, combining open software and open hardware, we need help from all communities asking themselves is there an open source alternative out there? when wen working on projects”, said Gibb.

Gibb talked about suspending reality and the future of open source hardware

Gibb talked about “atoms vs. bits” and the difference included in source from hardware to software: “Currently the open source hardware community doesn’t include the atomic layer in their source, for example where the copper comes from. When we talk about the source of hardware, we suspend reality a bit to include the important parts of the source to recreate the hardware, but raw materials are not considered something worth listing by the open hardware community at this point.”

She spoke about the future of open source hardware. “With more research, 3D printers could print entire components, or turn into desktop chip fabs – if people can create chips at home, they will share files and the IC industry will need to open source chips to stay relevant, whereas currently almost all ICs are closed.”

OSHWA is grateful for the opportunity to spread the word that open source hardware has a definition, a certification mark, and open hardware options exist in the world.

The Open Source Hardware Association, a 501(c)3 non-profit, is excited to announce the 2017 Open Hardware Summit taking place October 5th, 2017 in Denver, Colorado. This is the annual gathering of the OSHWA organization and open hardware community. Through the Open Hardware Summit, we aim to create an inclusive welcoming environment to empower people in all stages of discovering open source technology.

The Open Hardware Summit is where anyone and everyone can participate and collaborate in the open source community!

We are very pleased to announce that our new community forums are up and running. The discussion forums are powered by Discourse, which is easy to use, easy to maintain, and open source.

Among other new features, Discourse offers the ability to follow and reply to topics via email. This was one of the biggest reasons we decided to migrate our forums from their old home on bbPress. We’re hoping this will breathe some life into what has otherwise been an admittedly dormant part of the site.

All of the topics, replies, and user accounts have been imported from bbPress, but you’ll need to reset your password in order to log in on the new system.

Last month at the Open Hardware Summit we announced the start of the OSHWA open source hardware certification program. Part of that program involved issuing unique IDs (UIDs) for each piece of registered hardware. Since we knew that low numbers would be hot properties, we decided to wait until the end of October to assign them. That allowed us to give every piece of hardware registered in the month of October a chance for the lowest possible number.

Today, thanks to the good people at random.org, we have assigned those UIDs to all pieces of hardware registered before the end of October. We have also started assigning numbers sequentially for all pieces of hardware registered since November started. You can see all of the registered hardware here.

There were 60 different projects registered from 9 different countries. Want to get your own UID? Register here!

Thank you to our members who voted for OSHWA’s new board members! Your vote is a major contribution as we need to reach quorum (at least 10% of our members) to make anything official in OSHWA. This year, we filled 5 board member seats which will be held for 2 years. For the first time ever, we had a tie for the 5th board position between Abhishek Narula and Luis Rodriguez. The board decided to make the decision through a coin flip and create an honorary position for the other person.

Last October 8th we had the chance to share with our community some of the projects and advances made by our community during the 2nd Open Source Hardware Encounter, held in San Salvador, El Salvador. Our first event was organized by our promoter team in 2013, which gave way to the development of the community and its affiliation as an OSHWA Branch since February 2016. Since its beginning, the community has grown and participates mostly through local events organized in El Salvador, and social media. The event took place at the Francisco Gavidia University in San Salvador and brought local designers and enthusiasts. We also had the great pleasure of inviting the members of Southmade, the Open Hardware Community in Ecuador as part of the exchange that we have generated as the first international branches of the Open Hardware Association in the region.